The governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi, has said there’s no way the Federal government can borrow N1.1 trillion to meet the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) who have been on strike since February 14, 2022.
The union is demanding for the full implementation of the 2009 agreement it signed with the Federal Government, among others.
Speaking at the new Government House in Abakaliki on Wednesday, August 10, the governor said: “I cannot see how we cannot sit down with our ASUU leaders and iron out this problem about the ASUU strike.
I have read on social media and newspapers, how students got into trouble just by sitting at home or engaging in means of keeping themselves busy instead of being in schools. There is no way the country, Nigeria will go and borrow 1.1trillion to meet ASUU’s demand. It’s quite unreasonable. Are their demands genuine? Yes, but we can start little by little.
There must be commitment on the side of both parties, ASUU is not asking this to take to their houses so to say, they are asking it for our children to better the infrastructure, to better the lecturers and the students. Yes, but we can start with a fraction of that and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address all the lots.
But let me also say that most of the time, our people have low appetite for maintenance of public works. No matter how much you deploy to these universities, unless the users, the industry, the regulators begin to treat public infrastructure as their own in the various universities, it will continue to go bad no matter how much the federal government deploys to it.”
